Abstract:

As teachers and students try different ways of approaching design, every approach is different from one year to another and it also depends on the year of study: first-year students are invited to find out their strengths and weaknesses by developing creative projects such as illustrations, sketches, prototypes, representation techniques and ergonomy studies on existing objects.

The first year is meant to be the initial chapter of a conversation about design and its importance that has to be manifested continuously in every action, space, and object that the future designer interacts with. First-year students are encouraged to use and explore the university spaces, devices, and infrastructure as they please, to find out new methods of creating, and to have the courage to experiment.

The second year of studies opens up to finding out about a suite of computer software and a deeper level of understanding and approaching design as a practice. Using conventional methods such as visual and theoretical documentation, numerous variations of shapes and features are represented by sketches, 3d models, renders, and, finally, prototypes, the students are encouraged to approach the design process as a non-linear task, but rather as a holistic experiment that keeps going back and forth in order to find the best possible version. The applied methods are rather different depending on the scale of the project and its demands. A relevant example could be approaching the quick and dirty method with the purpose of trying a wide variety of solutions and quickly finding out the flaws. Launching subjects such as designing a chair, we demand creative and boundless approaches, encouraging the students to think outside the box, process and rethink concepts, and stop stressing about the implementation. The whole point of such exercise is to learn by making mistakes, by breaking materials, by choosing improper ways of implementing sketches, that every idea has various manifestations in real life and the design process is an actual process, rather than a finish line.

We also use unconventional methods of studying design in the third year of studies: Initiating a different kind of discourse and problematizing design thinking, based on the knowledge of our students, we try to remember the initial ways that they used during the first and second year of studies to analyze and improve upon. The third year is meant to create this environment filled with memories and old ways of approaching a subject and by remembering, we try to enhance the desire of finding out more ways and methods of experimenting and exploring.

Keywords:

Creative projects, encouraging students, rethinking concepts, problematizing design, experimenting, exploring, sketches, design thinking, non-linear process.